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What are some of the ways to identify authority sites?

#Authoritysites #Onlinesearch #Socialsignals Search Engines
July 3, 2016
EliteWriter Author Level 1

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Many think that if a site is the first one that appears on the first page of search engine results, then it must be an authority site. Although this may be the case, it does not mean that any other sites listed beneath it are not authority sites too.

Generally speaking, using placement only as a way to identify authority sites is not the best option. You should also focus on other things, because
  • SERPS vary
  • algorithm updates have an effect
  • there are also social signals that need to be considered

So I think that ultimately it is more about social engagement than anything else. What do you think?
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Comments 7

July 3, 2016
ajlancer
Hi EliteWriter thanks for your question and give some idea about authority site. Yes I agree with your given points. And I am going to add few more points which help to get as a high authority site.
> All authority site usually very high rank on Google by initial keyword
> High authority site a lot in your industry are usually authoritative.
> High authority site has massive user engagement and for example: lot of comments, likes, reviews, rating, page view, membership etc
> Authority site contain very high PR and more than 6
>Authority site has very high backlink profile and you can check by any backlink checker
>Authority site has large amount of root domain backlink

Regards by Ajlancer

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Lynne
Thanks Ajlancer for these additional tips. I just want to know what you mean by initial keyword?

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TommyCarey
Amount of users:
I always check the amount of users a website has when trying to figure out if it's an authority website. Now this could be difficult to do because not all websites show their amount of users they have, but if they do it's a great way to gauge the websites popularity. Most forums will say how many users they have in the footer because that's a good way to get people to sign up, but that's not like every website. Some websites will just say "XXXXXX downloads" or "XXXXXX members so far!" and that will give you an idea of how popular something is. Now all those members won't be active or even have the software or app downloaded, but it gives you an idea.

Indexed pages:
Checking how many pages of a website are indexed is a good way to see if they're trying to build their site up or if they've been around for a long time. A website with a few hundred pages obviously won't be as popular as a website with a few hundred thousand pages indexed. This metric isn't always accurate because someone can just auto generate content and have a few hundred thousand pages indexed over night and that's just when you happened to check.

How active is the blog or community:
You can always check the forum or blog of what you think is an authority website because if they truly are popular, they'll have a good amount of discussion going on in the comments or threads. On blogs you'll have to check the comments at the bottom of each post and see if it's just the same people commenting on everything. Usually when you find a popular or authority website it'll have dozens of unique people commenting on each post. There shouldn't be the same people commenting on each blog post, that's just trying to make the blog or website seem popular.

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Lynne
Thanks for these tips Razzy... yes I look for some of these signs that a website is an authority site.

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February 11, 2018
vinaya
One of the best ways to find about authority site is by analyzing its position on SERP. If you find the website on the top of search results, you can think of it as an authority site. Alexa rank can be manipulated, however, it can also give you an idea about authority site. If you see the site ranked higher on Alexa than you can understand it as an authority site.

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Corzhens
That’s actually what’s on my mind that authority sites would always be on the upper part of the first page of the search results. Perhaps the search engines have already tagged those authority sites to give it priority in the search list. I always see Wikipedia in the top 3 of the first page because it is an authority site for any kind of information. When I was searching for medical items, the Mayo Clinic was on top of the search list results.

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vinaya
Site ranking can be manipulated, however, by checking he site's position on search list for a given keywords can give you a fair idea on the site authority. You can also check page authority and domain authority to determine site authority. Most of the authority sites have high page authority and high domain authority.

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